Safer Watford, the town's Community Safety Partnership, brings together Watford Borough Council, Herts Constabulary, Herts Fire & Rescue, Herts County Council and other key local organisations.
The partnership works together to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour. We achieve this by protecting the vulnerable, diverting people away from crime and keeping you informed.
Community Safety Plan 2021-2024
Each year the Community Safety Partnership, also known as Safer Watford, is provided with a strategic assessment from the County Analysts, to review performance and reconsider its priorities and targets.
The strategic assessment is a partnership document that takes account of the priorities of partners, views of the community, current trends, and volumes of crime, categories and future projections.
Read the Community Safety Plan
Aim and purpose of this plan
The Community Safety Plan briefly outlines the aims of the Community Safety Partnership at a strategic level.
It identifies how the priorities set from the strategic assessment will be worked towards over a three year period but refreshed each year and amended if necessary.
The four priorities in this strategy are:
1. Serious Youth Violence
Links with robbery, violence against the person, drug trafficking, drug possession and incidents of such type all of which have a disproportionate impact upon the community in relation to feelings of safety and public confidence within the town.
2. Violence against women and girls
Links to serious sexual assault, rape, violence against the person and incidents of such type, which again have a disproportionate impact in relation to feelings of safety and public confidence within the town.
3. Community wellbeing
Delivery including Domestic Abuse Crime/Non Crime, Anit-Social Behaviour and Hate Crime. This work focuses on our community and is led by front line engagement, analytics (including ECHO) and public feedback, requiring a community safety partnership responses. This priority seeks to continue the partnership working to actively engage with the community to prevent and resolve emerging issues and community tensions.
4. Reassure and inform
Focuses the need to communicate and engage with the community to ensure they are informed given the known impact of perceptions of crime on feelings of safety and wellbeing. This will include a communication plan to consult and respond to community concerns.
Governance
This plan will be governed by Safer Watford.
There are a number of groups who will take in to account the priorities of this plan. This will steer the strategic work of Safer Watford.
It will be most relevant to this level, informing the development of action plans and regular reporting to monitoring groups.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Success will be demonstrated by reductions in offences in the key areas the strategic assessment outlined, the three key priorities are listed above.
The historically low number of crimes and ASB recorded in 2020 linked to the lock down and tier strategy implemented to deal with the Corona virus pandemic, means this data will need be set aside and the 2021 to 2022 crime analysis data will be used as the baseline for monitoring of the effectiveness of the community safety plan.
Resources
The work of Safer Watford is met within each agency's budget.
Lead Officer
Peter Taylor the elected Mayor of Watford is Chair of the Community Safety Partnership.
Responsible Authorities Group, which sets and monitors the priorities.
For further information please contact Watford's Environmental Health / Community Safety department by using our online contact form, or by telephone on 01923 278405.
